Dr Gisella Hanley

Gisella Hanley is an anthropologist with a long-standing interest in the co-design and development of interventions for improved mental health and wellbeing. She has carried out research with street children and young offenders in a Therapeutic Community in Brazil; street children in Mexico; young offenders in the UK in their transition to adulthood; drug and alcohol users in a Community Justice Court; and steroid users. Gisella has previously taken time out from academia to set up and run a drug rehabilitation and arts-based prevention programme for street and low-income children in the northeast of Brazil.

Among other projects, Gisella is currently working on an evaluation of the Community Health and Wellbeing Worker (CHWW) Service in Cornwall - a community healthcare initiative developed in Brazil and brought to the UK in 2021.

Gisella has worked as a lecturer in criminology at the University of Plymouth from 2014-2020, teaching on the following courses:

• Crime in Context (stage 1)
• Being a Criminologist (stage 1)
• Researching Crime and Criminal Justice (stage 2)
• Drugs, Crime and Society (stage 3)

She currently works as an Associate Lecturer in criminology, providing dissertation supervision to undergraduate students.